


Shards

by Secret Staircase (elwing_alcyone)



Category: Zero: Shisei no Koe | Fatal Frame III: The Tormented
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Ghosts, More Hurt Than Comfort, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-12-11 23:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11724384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/Secret%20Staircase
Summary: Kyouka is still waiting when another outsider comes to the Manor.





	Shards

**Author's Note:**

> This follows the default ending, i.e. Kei is dead. Written for the 2015 BCL Christmas Exchange.

They tell Kyouka the Unleashing has come, and the manor must be sealed. They tell her she must leave now, at once, no time to collect her things. There's a room all ready for her, in the new part of the house.

The new room has a mirror stand, a dresser, a kimono, and nothing else. They wouldn't even bring her koto. There's no way to pass the time but to look at her face in the mirror, and know that if Akito came, he wouldn't think her beautiful now. Her hair is still long, and she makes sure to keep it combed and shining, but it's thinner than it used to be. Her face is white as a mask. She tries biting her finger until a drop of blood appears, and painting her lips with that. The result is macabre. It gives her an odd thrill to wonder what he'd think if he came back now, and saw what has become of her.

She can hear voices. They've given her two small windows, looking out on the new hearth room; she gets to look down when her mother and the handmaidens gather for meals. She hasn't seen Amane for days, and that troubles her, but if she asks, no one will say.

They aren't going to let her leave. Even now, they won't allow it. She's going to rot away here like the rest of them.

"I'm not hungry," she says, when Shigure brings her meals. "My stomach hurts."

"It hurts because you haven't eaten anything," Shigure says, pushing the tray back towards her. Her eyes look red, as if she's been crying. "Just try a little."

Not so long ago she would have kicked the tray over. Now she turns quietly away, and lets the food go cold. She looks at her face in the mirror, and thinks about smashing this one, too; but no. She pulls the cloth back over it, and lies down on her side, curled around her aching stomach.

On the other side of the wall, she hears knocking. It's the old manor on that side, so nobody should be there. Maybe one of the carpenters they shut up is still alive. She doesn't care very much.

When she opens her eyes again, she's back in her old room. For so long she's been wanting to get away from this place, but in a way she's glad to be back. All her old familiar things are still here.

She plucks a few notes on the koto. They seem to ring through the whole house.

She'll wait, just as she's always done.

* * *

The man comes wandering through her room in a daze. He used to be warm, infuriatingly warm, but now she can hardly feel him. He doesn't seem to know where he is, and after a moment he crouches down in the corner and hides his face.

She supposes she knows he isn't Akito, no matter how alike they are. It's been too long for that. Still, the sight of his suffering moves her. It makes her remember that she didn't always want to remonstrate with him; she used to imagine a very different reunion.

When she puts her hand on the back of his neck he dives away from her, throwing up his hands. He looks up at her, at the room, and something clarifies in his expression.

"You're not the priestess," he says. "I — failed, didn't I?"

He looks so lost, it's impossible to believe she ever wanted to hurt him. His eyes fix on her face, and he frowns in recognition.

"You," he says. "I remember you."

"Akito?" she says, still hoping.

But he shakes his head. "Sorry. You've mistaken me for someone else."

Despondent, she returns to her mirror stand and takes up her comb once more. He sits too, in the corner, with his legs drawn up like a child, and watches her warily. Perhaps wondering whether she plans to attack him again. It occurs to her to ask him, "Who are you, then?"

"I'm Kei. Kei Amakura."

"Why did you come here?"

"My niece, she — you know about the curse?"

"The Unleashing."

"Yes. My niece was... pulled into the Rift, I guess you'd call it. I was looking for a way to save her, and I ended up getting trapped myself."

She goes on combing her hair, watching him through the tarnished shards of her mirror. He looks distressingly young.

"You had Akito's camera."

"I found it in a drawer with..." He averts his eyes. "Some other things. I must have dropped it in the Chamber of Thorns."

She starts. "What were you doing in there?"

"I thought if I could impale the priestess, it might stop the Unleashing. I found the four stakes, but it's no good. She's impaled already, she just won't sleep."

A part of Kyouka — a much larger part than her mother would have credited — is appalled. That an outsider should have managed to learn so much about their rituals — that he should have breached the Chamber of Thorns, and even thought himself fit to perform the impalement. It's something Akito would never have done. In the whole time he was here, he never strayed from his assigned rooms, or repeated a question when the answer was once refused.

"There must be something I can do," Kei says, but not to her. "But you can't even get close. You can't fight her."

He drops his head and mutters to himself, the way they all do, lost to everything but his own consuming regrets. It's the same for her, sometimes; if he leaves, she'll forget he was ever here.

"There has to be something," he says, muffled, and she wishes it were true. If she or Akito had been more daring when they were alive, things might have come out differently. If she had it all to do over, she'd tell Akito everything — she'd make him understand what this place really is, and why they both had to run. She'd never wait long enough for her hope to decay.

But life has gone, and taken all its chances with it. Regrets are all they have, either of them.

She crawls across the floor to him. "Tell me about where you came from."

"What?" He looks up, bewildered, as if he's already forgotten her. "Why?"

Because it's what Akito did, and nobody has really talked to her since then, in life or death. She was like the pillars her whole life, sealed away behind the walls of the shrine. She wants someone to know she's here. She wants to hear a human voice saying something new. It's been so long since the wonder of it all turned to bitterness, so long since she felt anything good at all. Maybe it's not possible for either of them, but he's made her want to try.

"While you still remember," she says. "It won't last. Don't go, don't go running off; you can't do anything, you'll only end up wandering, and in the end nothing will seem important. You'll be like me. You'll just waste away."

He stares at her. She can see him struggling. Then, haltingly, he begins, and he doesn't seem to mind when she draws close to listen. Her hair spills down across his shoulder, and she thinks it looks as fine and shining as it did when Akito put out his hand, and asked her, _May I?_ Somehow, she forgot that, the night they first met, when they were both so shy and uncertain around each other. The memory has a sharp, aching sweetness, like a lungful of air on a snowy night.

At some point his voice falls silent. They don't move, either of them. It can't last, she knows it can't. The cold is creeping back in, and the stillness of the house is all around them. She remembers biting her fingers and daubing her lips with the blood. That isn't too far off.

"Is there anything you want to tell me? About your life?" he asks.

She could say so many things then. She could tell him that a man once thought that she was beautiful, a treasure precious enough to steal. She could tell him how things went wrong, so gradually she didn't realise until everything good was gone. She could tell him she had a son and a daughter and doesn't know what became of either of them. She could even tell him the ritual to deal with a priestess who won't sleep, for all the good it will do him now.

She takes a kiss instead, a cold kiss, and brief. It's as if she found Akito lying dead in the snow: something that was almost him, but unfamiliar, with all the life gone. The first time he kissed her, she shivered as if with chill. Now they are both icy and calm.

She tells him goodbye, and turns away.

Among the broken pieces of her mirror, she finds her comb. She finds her koto, waiting for melodies she doesn't remember how to play. She finds the photograph and earring still locked away in the drawer. In all the years of listening, she never heard his voice from the earring, but she still takes it out from time to time and holds it between her palms. His promise.

She'll wait, just as she's always done.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope I'm not annoying anyone by cross-posting these. I also have a [Tumblr](http://secretstaircase.tumblr.com/), so come and say hi over there if you like!


End file.
